Better, Faster, Cheaper

When government discovers a problem, addressing it can be difficult. But if state and local leaders put off dealing with the problem, difficult often becomes disastrous.

New Jersey provides the most recent proof of this simple truth. In the mid-1990s, the state started deferring payments to its pension plan, instead using the money to plug short-term budget holes. Predictably, the state's public-pension and retiree-health-benefits system is now the fourth most underfunded in the country.
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Boston has endured over seven feet of snow in less than a month, and the most visible casualty has been the region's decrepit transit system. A closer look at the woes bedeviling the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) reveals a more-than-20-year guide to how not to run a transit system, and the lessons don't only apply to systems that have to contend with mountains of snow and extreme cold.

The MBTA's struggle with this winter's weather has become national news. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker's frustration grew as the system was unable to restore service after each storm, causing MBTA General Manager Beverly Scott to announce her resignation. She then said it would be 30 days before full commuter-rail and subway service could be restored -- if there were no more snow in the interim.
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In 2009, President Obama announced the first social innovation fund (SIF), an initiative of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which I chaired at the time. SIFs provide a new way of thinking about how to fund government services: Instead of prescriptively asking nonprofits to respond to a bid, we would ask them to nominate an important social problem and describe how they would go about solving it. Over the years, the fund has invested more than a half-billion dollars to address social challenges.

Building on those successes, governments across the country have begun to utilize social impact bonds (SIBs) to solve complex problems with the help of private investors -- and to put those resources only into approaches that work. I recently spoke with Ben McAdams, mayor of Utah's Salt Lake County and champion of a pioneering SIB in the field of early childhood education. The Utah High Quality Preschool Program provides assistance to increase school readiness and academic performance among 3- and 4-year-olds to reduce the number of children who require costly special education and remedial services.
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By issuing an executive order this week ending the requirement that state employees who choose not to join a union pay fees to support their share of collective-bargaining costs, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner is the latest elected official to thrust the politically charged debate over public-employee unions into the headlines. Rauner calls the fees a "critical cog in the corrupt bargain that is crushing taxpayers." If his order withstands the expected legal challenges, it would likely cripple Illinois' public-employee unions.

The issue the new Republican governor's order addresses comes down to balancing the First Amendment rights of employees not to support political activity they disapprove of against preventing "free-riders" from reaping benefits from collective-bargaining agreements toward which they didn't contribute.
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Last year, police in Prince George's County, Md., found themselves faced with an alarming increase in armed robberies of commercial establishments. Their response proved just how successful the wise use of data and a willingness to set aggressive goals -- along with a healthy dollop of creativity -- can be in the fight against crime.

Police in the Washington, D.C., suburb went to work analyzing the crime spree, which at one point reached 52 more commercial armed robberies than had been committed by the same date in 2013. They looked at when and where the crimes occurred, and by last fall they were ready to implement a commercial robbery reduction plan known as "1828" -- so named because the operation would take place between Oct. 18 and Nov. 28, dates during which there had been a particularly high number of robberies the previous year.
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Neil Kleiman is deputy executive director of policy, research and evaluation for the National Resource Network and a professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York Uni
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John M. Bernard is chairman and founder of Portland, Ore.-based Mass Ingenuity and author of "Business at the Speed of Now." His firm is doing organizational-transformation consulting in Oregon and Wa
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